The Navigation Act of 1660 restricted the employment of non-English sailors to a quarter of the crew on returning East India Company ships. Baptism records in East Greenwich suggest that a small number of young Indians from the Malabar Coast were being recruited as house servants at the end of the 17th century, and records of the EIC also suggest that Indo-Portuguese cooks from Goa were retained by captains from voyage to voyage.[4] In 1797, 13 were buried in the parish of St Nicholas at Deptford.

During the 19th century, the East India Company brought over thousands of Indian lascars, scholars and workers (who were largely Bengali and/or Muslim) to Britain, most of whom settled down and took local British wives, due to a lack of Indian women in Britain at the time.[8] Due to the majority of early Asian immigrants being lascar seamen, the earliest Indian communities were found in port towns. Naval cooks also came, many of them from the Sylhet Division of what is now Bangladesh. One of the most famous early Bengali immigrants to Britain was Sake Dean Mahomet, a captain of the British East India Company. In 1810, he founded London's first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostane Coffee House. He is also reputed for introducing shampoo and therapeutic massage to the United Kingdom.[9] By the mid-19th century, there were more than 40,000 Indian seamen, diplomats, scholars, soldiers, officials, tourists, businessmen and students in Britain.[6]

Although post-war immigration was continuous, several distinct phases can be identified:

workers were recruited to fulfill the labour shortage that resulted from World War II. These included Anglo-Indians who were recruited to work on the railways as they had done in India.

Workers mainly from the Punjab and Gujarat regions arrived from India in the late 1950s and 1960s. Many worked in the foundries of the English Midlands. Large numbers of Gujaratis worked in the textile manufacturing sector in the northwest industrial towns of Blackburn, Dewsbury, Bolton, Lancaster, Manchester and Preston, while some Sikh people worked at Heathrow Airport in west London. This created an environment to where the next generation of families do not lose their identity as easily.

During the same time, medical staff from India were recruited for the newly formed National Health Service. These people were targeted as the British had established medical schools in the Indian subcontinent which conformed to the British standards of medical training.

During the 1960s and 1970s, large numbers of East African Indians, predominantly Gujaratis but also sizeable numbers of Punjabis who already held British passports, entered the UK after they were expelled from Kenya, Uganda and Zanzibar. Many of these people had been store-keepers and wholesale retailers in Africa and opened shops when they arrived in the UK.

By the early 21st century, the British Indian community had grown to number over one million. According to the 2001 UK Census, 1,053,411 Britons had full Indian ethnicity (representing 1.8% of the UK's population). An overwhelming majority of 99.3% resided in England (in 2008 the figure is thought to be around 97.0%). In the nine-year period between 2001 and 2010, the number of Indian-born people in the UK has increased in size by 43% from 467,634 to around 669,000 (an increase of over 200,000).[11]

Indians have existed in the UK for generations and have long been the country's largest visible ethnic minority group. In 2006 there were at least 1.3 million Indians in the UK, while one estimate for 2008 suggests a total of 1.6 million British Indians.[13]

In the 2001 UK Census, Indians in the UK were most likely to have responded to code 41 - Indian or Indian British. Indian was one of only five sub categories in the UK census which represents a nation (along with Irish, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese).

India is a diverse nation composed of many ethnic groups, this is reflected in the British Indian community although there are several ethnic groups that number considerably more than others. The largest subgroup of British Indians are those of Punjabi origin (representing approximately two thirds of direct migrants from South Asia to the UK), combined with Pakistani Punjabis they number over 2 million in the UK and are the largest Punjabi community outside of South Asia.[14]British Gujaratis are also another large subgroup of the British Indian population and they form the largest overseas Gujarati population on earth, being larger than the combined Gujarati communities of New York City and Toronto (which are second and third largest, respectively). There are also approximately half a million Bengalis in the UK (although not all of these people originate from what is now considered India, but Bangladesh too).[15] Alongside Punjabis, Gujaratis and Bengalis there are also significant numbers of Tamils and Parsis. There is a large community of Goans in the Greater London area and in Swindon. With smaller communities in Southampton and Leicester. There has also been a recent immigration of Malayalees from South India who number approximately 100,000.

Indians number over half a million in London, which is the city's single largest non-white ethnic group. Indians have a significant impact on the culture of the British capital.[citation needed] Within London, Southall, Hounslow, Brent, Croydon, Redbridge, Ealing, Barnet, Tooting, Harrow and Wembley, the latter of which is one of the few places outside of India where Indians make up the largest ethnic group (almost 4 times larger than the indigenous White British population). There are more Indians in the British capital than in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and Portugal combined.

Leicester
Leicester is set to soon become the UK's first ethnic minority-majority city and Indians make up by far the largest ethnic group besides the White British. At 18.7% of the local population in 2009, Leicester has one of the highest percentages of Indians per head of the population of any local authority in the UK.[20] According to the 2001 UK Census, 14.74% of Leicester's population were Hindu and 4.21% Sikh.[21]Gujarati is the primary language of 16% of the city’s residents, 3% Punjabi and 2% Urdu. Other smaller but common language groups include Hindi and Bengali.[22]

Sikhs are also supporting separate Sikh monitoring in the 2011 census, Virendra Sharma MP met with representatives from the Sikh community to lobby parliament in November 2009 stating "It is vital that the Office of National Statistics recognise the importance of the Sikh community and provide this monitoring at the next Census".[25]

Today the British Indian community is extremely well established and it even has its own diaspora, many Indian British people now live abroad including in Canada (some 11,200), the United States (around 17,000) and Oceania (largely Anglo-Indians) amongst others.[citation needed]

Indian cuisine is extremely popular in the United Kingdom. The hybrid dish "Chicken tikka masala" always comes out on top as the UK's favourite meal.[citation needed] There are around 9,000 Indian restaurants located across the UK, which equates to approximately one per 7,000 people.[citation needed] The popularity of the Indian curry in the UK was mainly made by Bangladeshi restaurateurs, where 85 percent of Indian restaurants in the UK are in fact owned by Bangladeshi SylhetiBengalis.[26] Over 2 million Britons eat at Indian restaurants in the UK every week, with a further 3 million cooking at least one Indian based meal at home during the week.[27][28]Veeraswamy, probably the world's most famous Indian restaurant is located on Regent Street in London, and is the oldest surviving Indian restaurant in the UK, having opened in 1926.[citation needed]

The BBC Asian Network is a radio station available across the United Kingdom which is aimed predominantly at Britons of South Asian origin under 35 years of age. Besides this popular station there are only a few other national radio stations for or run by the British Indian community — including Sunrise and Yarr Radios. Regional British Indian stations include Asian Sound of Manchester, Hindu Sanskar and Sabras Radios of Leicester, Kismat Radio of London, Radio XL of Birmingham and Sunrise Radio Yorkshire based in Bradford (which itself has a much larger Pakistani than Indian community).

Many British Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs still adhere to the caste system and still seek marriage with individuals who are of similar caste categories. There have been several incidents involving abuse of low caste British Hindus, known as Dalits, by higher caste individuals in schools and workplaces.[35][36] However, other Hindus say that caste discrimination is a thing of the past in Britain, and that the Asian community has moved on.[35]

Verbal discrimination has become somewhat more common after the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks,[citation needed] even though extremists who committed these atrocities have little to do[citation needed] with the British Indian community. A notable example of anti-Indian sentiment in the UK is the 2007 Celebrity Big Brother racism controversy which received significant media coverage. White contestants Jade Goody (who is mixed race), Danielle Lloyd and Jo O'Meara were all seen to have been mocking Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty because of her accent. They also persisted in making fun of general parts of Indian culture. Channel 4 screened the arguments between the contestants, which received over 50,000 complaints. The controversy generated over 300 newspaper articles in Britain, 1,200 in English language newspapers around the globe, 3,900 foreign language news articles, and 22,000 blog postings on the internet.[37]

Another example of discrimination is the Expulsion of Asians in Uganda in 1972 (a decision made by the President of Uganda to ethnically cleanse the country) which lead to tens of thousands of East African Indians coming to the UK to start a new life, the majority of these already had British passports, due to Uganda at that time being part of the British Empire.

Other examples of discrimination towards British Indians in the mainstream population include the case of 27 year old Chetankumar Meshram, a call centre trainer from Northampton who was compensated £5,000 after his boss told him he was to be replaced by a better English speaker.[38] Also Meena Sagoo, 42 is demanding over £100,000 after herself and a fellow employee of the ING Bank of Sri Lankan heritage were called The Kumars at No. 42 (after the popular TV comedy show of the same name). The same bank has been noted to have paid out £20,000 to a worker of Chinese origin who also claimed racial harassment.[39]

Another form of discrimination towards British Indians is stereotyping, one example is British Asians stereotyped as being the majority of newsagent and convenience store shopkeepers, the stereotype "Paki shop"; and also making up a majority of doctors. These are all often associated as being hardworking. This stereotype was made fun of in the television and radio sketches of Goodness Gracious Me by four British Indian comedy actors. In the comedy sketch Little Britain, a British Indian character called Meera continuously receives racist comments from weight loss advisor Marjorie Dawes who always makes it known that she does not understand a word of what Meera says, although it is completely obvious to the surrounding people and the viewer.

According to a study published by Oxford University 1500 girls are missing from birth records in England and Wales over a 15-year period from 1990 to 2005. The vast majority of the abortions are carried out in India.[40][41]

The richest person in Britain Lakshmi Nivas Mittal is an Indian citizen with an estimated fortune of £10.8 billion in 2009.[42] A study by Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2007 found British Indians have among the lowest poverty rates among different ethnic groups in Britain second only to white British. Of the different ethnic groups, Bangladeshis (65%), Pakistanis (55%) and black Africans (45%) had the highest rates; black Caribbeans (30%), Indians (25%), white Other (25%) and white British (20%) had the lowest rates.[43] According to BBC findings, the economic makeup in 2001 of Indian-born British Indians is 65.98% of new immigrants were employed, with 16.43% being 'low earners' (people earning less than £149.20 a week) and 18.13% being 'high earners' (people earning more than £750 a week). By comparison, settled Indian immigrants to the UK are actually slightly less likely to be in employment, at 62.85%; the percentage of low and high earners for settled immigrants stood at 15.9% and 7.88% respectively. Therefore on average, 64.42% of Indian-born immigrants to the UK are employed. This figure is approximately 10% lower than the rate of employment for British-born people (regardless of ethnicity) which stood at 73.49% in 2001.[44]Sikhs are on average the wealthiest Indians, and the second wealthiest religious group after Jewish people, in the UK, with a median total household wealth of £229,000.[45]